The Whole-School Approach and Transformative Learning: The Case of a Portuguese School (original) (raw)
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San Silvestre School launched Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in 2011 with the development of a school ESD Policy, strategies and initiatives. ESD events and activities have been implemented into school life and it is slowly ´taking root´ in the school. It is important now to examine the factors which currently impede the continued development of ESD in the school. Whilst the Early Years and Primary sections operate in a more holistic paradigm with creativity, enquiry based learning and critical thinking being valued and implemented in at least 50% of the curriculum and pedagogy; the Secondary section continues to operate in a more reductionist paradigm with defined subject boundaries, summative examination focus and global competitiveness being the focus of the curriculum and pedagogy. This dichotomous existence of pedagogy creates a tension which imposes a significant barrier to the deeper implementation of ESD in San Silvestre School. The collection of data through observation, interviews, surveys and audits has provided this report with information which indicates that the most significant findings are: (i) There continues to exist a significant challenge in articulating a common understanding of ESD to all members of the school community. (ii) The staff requires significant professional development to ensure confidence in addressing ESD in their curriculum areas. (iii) There is a distinct absence of values, attitudes and behaviours in the curriculum standards and that there is little or no action based outcomes. (iv) Subject importance is the secondary section is directly related to examinable status and socio-historical perspectives. (v) More depth is required in the Citizenship units of work in social Studies and the level of work is not comprehensive enough. The most significant recommendations made include: (i) Workshops for the parents in which the philosophy of ESD is made clearer as well as the associated school strategies, language, logos, activities and events are shared in a more effective way. (ii) Developing and implementing a Professional Development programme for the staff. (iii) Establishing a working party in order to conduct research into transformative learning theories with the idea to develop an alternative pedagogical model which might operate throughout the school. (iv) A continuation of the curriculum audit at a departmental level. Attending this school must be about more than completing externally designed programmes, passing internationally recognised examinations and attaining globally determined levels of academic success in order to attain vocational success. This school should also ‘equip students with the intellectual, cultural and social capital necessary to pursue a wide range of post school opportunities’. (Collins, et al 2000, p39).
Janice Yelland-Sutcliffe, 2012
The problems facing many secondary schools are the increasing demands from the changing governments, target driven expectations, economic crisis and an overload of initiatives and change. However they are also being called upon to become sustainable and to adopt a highly participatory approach in decision-making, which includes the young people studying within the schools (pupils). Much has been written about participation, sustainability and school development, but very little about schools yet to take on sustainability as a commitment. The study looks at one such school and asks the question what is possible if the pupils were to get involved i.e. “What is the possible role of pupil participation within the development of a sustainable school?” In order to produce the in depth constructions of perspective and possibilities, Guba and Lincoln’s Fourth Generation Evaluation methodology was adopted. The study revealed pupils being frequently involved at various levels of decision-making, however both pupils and staff thought that the quality was inconsistent and that there was room for improvement in particular pupils taking on responsibility and initiative. There were obstacles in embracing sustainability for example the pupils’ lack of knowledge and understanding, where as for the staff there was a sense of being overwhelmed by enormity of the challenge. Both groups agreed that the way forward was to improve communications (including information) as this would lead to an increase of mutual understanding of the situation and respect of each other’s ability to support the school becoming sustainable. This was considered the foundation for improved pupil participation, but that it needed to be negotiated, not just prescribed by the staff.
Competences for education for sustainability: analysis of educational policy documents in Portugal
Práxis Educacional, 2021
The present study is part of the TEDS - Teacher Education for Sustainability project. This is an Erasmus+ project and involves five European countries: Portugal, France, Lithuania, Finland and Malta. The main aim of the TEDS project is to provide European teacher educators and teachers with the knowledge and tools necessary to implement an education that promotes sustainability in their practices. Within this project, one of the objectives was to understand how key competences in education for sustainability are present in the educational documents of each of the participating countries. This article refers to the analysis carried out on Portuguese educational documents. It is a qualitative study framed on the interpretive paradigm. It is an exploratory, descriptive-interpretive study aimed at identifying and describing the main characteristics related to the key competences in education for sustainability present in the official Portuguese documents that guide teaching and lear...
THE THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY IN EDUCATION: THE SISTEMIC APPROACH OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
THE THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY IN EDUCATION: THE SISTEMIC APPROACH OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, 2022
Sustainability should be a cross-cutting theme within the curriculum as a set of essentially attitudinal teaching contents that should become part of the activities proposed in all educational areas. Their incorporation means formalizing an education in values and attitudes not sporadically but constantly throughout each course. However, it is also a poorly understood term that needs to be correctly identified to carry out more effective actions within an educational institution. A topic is transversal if it is important for development and needs, for its success, many teachers from different areas to be involved in it. Therefore, the Universidad del Atlántico in Barranquilla, Colombia is committed to this multidisciplinary project. Three students from 15 classrooms from 3 different careers have been taken to carry out this educational project. This is an analytical observational study of qualitative nature, where the researchers simply attempt to systematically describe the characteristics of categories, and phenomena, then compare constructs and postulates generated from phenomena observed in research context, as well as to discover causal relationships, but avoid assuming a priori constructs or relationships. The general conclusion of the study is that there is a need to broaden the horizons of this study to a much wider population and not only to the educational sector.
Sustainability
This study aims to identify and characterize the understanding of the concept of Sustainable Development in the official scientific educational documents of basic education in Portugal. Methodologically, it is a qualitative study that fits into the interpretive paradigm; its implementation is based on an interpretative-descriptive strategy of exploratory nature. The study involved the organization of the analysis corpus and the subsequent content analysis of the selected documents. The documents included in this corpus are the official educational documents on the teaching and learning of Natural Sciences in Basic Education (1st to 9th grade—ages 6 to 15): the Essential Learning and two transversal documents (the Student Profile on Leaving Compulsory Schooling and the Environmental Education Framework for Sustainability). The obtained results show that these documents frame and guide the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development, in all its dimensions, throughout basic...
Characteristics of Sustainable Changes for Schools
Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, 2008
The article discusses some aspects of the concept of sustainable development and its educational manifestation ñ education for sustainable development. The concept of education for sustainable development is broadly accepted, but less attention has been paid to the extent to which innovations or changes are sustained over time, what characteristics or factors support their sustainability. The article introduces a model of six characteristics of sustainable changes in schools and changes concerning sustainable development in Estonian schools have been analyzed using qualitative research methods. The model consists of the following characteristics: depth, endurance, justice, diversity, conservation, and capital. According to the model, the positive changes in Estonian schools have been about the national curriculum, internal evaluation system as the basis for autonomy and self-management. The areas requiring greater change are justice or interdependence, diversity ñ respect for other people and the connections between formal and non-formal education as well as between schools and teacher training institutions.
Sustainability, 2019
In this article, we consider the problem of ensuring that Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is firmly embedded in a school through appropriate management and planning of the school’s activities (or characteristics of the school organization). To this end, we identify the domains of school organization that would benefit from particular structures and routines in order to embed ESD. We identify these domains by thematically analyzing responses of interviewed leaders of schools employing a transformative approach to ESD. We divided the leaders into two groups, based on the extent to which their respective schools employed a transformative approach to ESD. We analyzed the differences in responses of the two groups, enabling us to identify and compare the structures that school leaders in the respective groups believe to be important. In addition to reporting the results, we discuss their implications. We focus particularly on how structures identified by leaders of highly tra...
Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Isss 2014 United States, 2015
The larger system is the real world. It is the framework, or the reference context for a viable process of open systems intervention. The educative and cultural system is a very complex system for a systemic transformation process. We can use a cybernetic Participative Action Research, PAR process, to change a particular educational process with the use of a critical, and propositive approach. The process of change can be a qualitative small scale application. The form of knowledge for a participatory process of transformation, should be transdisciplinary, to include the different types of knowledge of a relevant and plural group of social actors involved in the educational process. The systemic process of transformation is a cybernetic Participatory Action-Research, or PAR process (Fals Borda, 1998). Through this process of change we link the auto, or internal system, with the eco or external system as a creative process or auto-eco organization (Morin, 1999). This is a qualitative participative process for the integral transformation of an educational process with the intervention of relevant social actors. It can address in the educational system the critical social and environmental problematic situations. In this paper we present a brief description of a recent application in an alternative educational network. This qualitative complex organization is organized by an independent network of conscious social actors involved in different levels of the educational process at many public and private educative institutions in Mexico, and in other countries. The name of the mexican network is: Consejo de Transformacion Educativa, CTE, or Education Transformation Council, ETC. It is a qualitative small scale process for the systemic transformation of the mexican educational process, it is an alternative social laboratory of change. Keywords-Action-research process, auto-eco-organization, plocal cybernetic process, participative grass roots process, transdisciplinary knowledge. CRITICAL CONTEXT OF THE EDUCATION PROCESS There has been a limited emphasis on the use of complementary creative education processes and methods, for a better quality of life. Alternative methods are very useful for building emphatic relationships between citizens and education professionals for a more precise social, environmental and economic diagnosis that can reduce the risk of social and environmental collapse.